Nonfiction: biography/ethnography: Dr. Frau: A Woman Doctor Among the Amish, Grace H. Kaiser

Found while weeding the collection.

Dr. Frau: A Woman Doctor Among the Amish
Grace H. Kaiser
ISBN: 0934672342
Finished November 6, 2014

I was interested in this book because I've always had a bit of an interest/soft spot in my affections for Amish and Mennonite peoples.  My own church upbringing was rural and similarly sheltered from secular influence, so I see a lot of my own background in their culture and lifestyles.  One of my favorite nonfiction books as a child and young adult was Rosanna of the Amish by Joseph W. Yoder,("Restored Text" edition with editor Julia Spicher Kasdorf ISBN: 9780836194081).  I read it often, and was very interested in the lifestyles and religious practices which sometimes matched so closely to my own background, and sometimes seemed so strange and alien to me.

This book wasn't as good as I hoped for, the author is obviously not a natural writer (expected, as she's a professional credentialed working doctor), and her vignettes, while interesting, aren't written in a way that enhances or embellishes their natural circumstances.  On the one hand, that means that the stories are un-polished and sometimes lacking in narrative tricks to sustain interest, but on the other, they are obviously true and natural memories of real-life events in all their chaotic and messy undertones.

If you really adore the Amish, this is an interesting outsider's perspective on them, focused almost exclusively on the experiences of birthing mothers and expectant families (much like James Herriot's stories of veterinary life, there's lots of getting up in the middle of the night from a warm bed and rattling around a cold or rainy countryside, hoping that you get to far-flung farms in time to help).  There is very little internal information - the author never learned much (really any) Pennsylvania Dutch, and her experiences and friendships remain the somewhat reserved and professional contacts between patient and doctor, Amish and English, even though in the countryside, both of those boundaries are less restrictive or formal than they would perhaps be in other situations.

While the narrative voice is clear and appealing, the writing skills are a bit lacking, and for me, that lack of polish was a great detriment to the vignettes that were presented, and the vividness of the people and events suffered.